Parental and peer influence on adolescent smoking in Vietnam

Abstract

To estimate the magnitude of the association between parent and peer influences on adolescent smoking as non-; light-; and heavy current smokers. By using data from 18,912 adolescents, ages from 13 to 15 years, from two years 2007 and 2014 of the Global Youth Tobacco Survey in Vietnam, were selected for these analyses. Data collected included measures for the smoking status of the adolescent and their parents and friends. Descriptive analysis was used to describe the characteristics of each individual variable. After that, the ordered logistic regression was applied to estimate the relationship between smoking behaviour of parents and peer, with the level of addiction of current smoking among school-going students. I also added up other variables in the regression model as control variables to further examine the association between the dependent and independent variables. Then, examine this association by some subsample to observe the gender and age trends of these relationships. This analysis confirmed that young people were more likely to use cigarettes when their parents and friends smoked, the status of current smoking here was at a light- and heavy- level as well. Especially, the probability of smoking from the effect of friends’ cigarette use was generally higher compared to the effect of smoking of parents. In addition, there were differences in influence from the smoking of parent and peer by groups of age and gender of adolescents. The influence of parent and peer were increased when students became older from 13 to 15 years old. While gender-specific influences were identified in the peer impacts on adolescent smoking for both boy and girl; parental smoking only significantly associated with boy.